Four mistakes you are making with your employee appreciation efforts
Vartika Kashyap
January 5, 2018

A wise man once said - people work for money, but go the extra mile for recognition, praise and rewards.

Employee appreciation is a broad term. It covers everything from giving a simple pat on the back of an employee who has done a good job to showering monetary rewards on the team when they deliver the project successfully.

As work cultures are moving through winds of change, we see businesses focusing more on recognizing the employees for their efforts. More and more number of organizations are paying heed to what can make the employees stick with them in the longer, apart from just the monetary perks. Though things are changing, but a number of organizations are still stuck with the old school ways when it comes to employee appreciation. This is what I’m going to bring into notice in this blog post.

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Where businesses generally get wrong

There are quite a number of different ways of showing how much you value your team and employees. However, businesses make these silly mistakes while showering their appreciation. Let us have a look at what those mistakes are -

1. Waiting for too long to appreciate

There is a time for everything. You might have your company’s annual day, and might also be willing to wait for that day to celebrate the achievements of your employees and shower appreciation. However, at times it could be too late.

As a leader of the team, every day should be employee appreciation day. Rather than waiting for the right day and the right moment for everything, take every possible opportunity that you get to appreciate the efforts of your employees. Your employees will care for you and your business, only if they will feel you care for them - these feelings come mutually.

2. Praising only achievements not the efforts

Even the strongest of men fall, no matter how hard they strive to achieve success. Not every time you get paid for the efforts you put in. this is the reason that as a leader, sometimes, you need to appreciate the efforts your team members are putting rather than the achievements. It is these efforts that will bring the achievements sooner or later.

Don’t be adamant of sticking to achievements as the only criterion to acknowledge the efforts put by an employee. Sometimes the people who toll the hardest end up missing the mark by just a faction. This does not mean they did not perform well. So, you need to consider all this as well.

3. Leaving the thinkers behind or vice versa

There are two phases of working on a task. First is the planning and brainstorming phase, and the second one is implementing what is planned. Both are equally important - you cannot discredit the importance of one over the other. However, there are organizations that pay heed only to appreciating the efforts of people who are at the forefront. They forget that the idea that was executed had a lot of brainstorming done behind the scenes.

It is important for the organization to appreciate the efforts of thinkers and workers alike. Success could never have been possible without the help of either of the two. Therefore it becomes your responsibility as a leader and as a manager to appreciate both.

4. Judging the fish on its ability to climb a tree

Yes, it is important for you to set some benchmarks for analysing the perform of team members. But, these benchmarks should be based on the job profile and work role of the individual. Rather than making uniform guidelines for every team, you need to take into consideration the metrics that judge success for each team.

For instance, the role of marketing team is either in building a brand, or getting more number of customers to reach you. But if you will start to analyse their performance by the revenue they generate you would never be able to appreciate the efforts. Revenue generation must be left to the sales team. Similarly if you would judge the performance of a designer by the number of leads his or her design is able to generate, it won’t be a true judgement of the performance. You need to consider all these factors when acknowledging the efforts of your team members.

These were some of the common points where businesses generally get wrong in appreciating their team members. Now look at them and analyze where are you going wrong with your strategies that might be making your good employees leave.

In fact, one important point that you must remember is that it’s just the monetary incentives I am talking about here. I am also talking about the small things like giving a pat on the back sometimes. Shooting a mail of appreciation for someone. Giving a round of applause in meeting. These small things also play a massive role in reducing the employee turnover and improving their performance.

The next time you think of employee appreciation, do consider all these things!